Former President Joe Biden speaks through the Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled bipartisan conference on the Sofitel Chicago Magnificent Mile on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.
Eileen T. Meslar | Chicago Tribune | Getty Images
Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his office said Sunday.
Biden was seen by doctors last week after urinary symptoms and a prostate nodule were found. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.
“While this represents a more aggressive type of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” his office said. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options together with his physicians.”
Prostate cancers are given a rating called a Gleason rating that measures, on a scale of 1 to 10, how the cancerous cells look compared with normal cells. Biden’s office said his rating was 9, suggesting his cancer is amongst probably the most aggressive.
When prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it often spreads to the bones. Metastasized cancer is far harder to treat than localized cancer because it will possibly be hard for drugs to succeed in all of the tumors and completely root out the disease.
Nonetheless, when prostate cancers need hormones to grow, as in Biden’s case, they may be vulnerable to treatment that deprives the tumors of hormones.
The health of Biden, 82, was a dominant concern amongst voters during his time as president. After a calamitous debate performance in June while searching for reelection, Biden abandoned his bid for a second term. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee and lost to Republican Donald Trump, who returned to the White House after a four-year hiatus.
But in recent days, Biden rejected concerns about his age despite reporting in the brand new book “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that aides had shielded the general public from the extent of his decline while serving as president.
In February 2023, Biden had a skin lesion faraway from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a typical type of skin cancer. And in November 2021, he had a polyp faraway from his colon that was a benign, but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.
In 2022, Biden made a “cancer moonshot” one in all his administration’s priorities with the goal of halving the cancer death rate over the following 25 years. The initiative was a continuation of his work as vice chairman to handle a disease that had killed his older son, Beau, who died from brain cancer in 2015.
His father, when announcing the goal to halve the cancer death rate, said this may very well be an “American moment to prove to ourselves and, quite frankly, the world that we will do really big things.”
